From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A World War II-era
wood-sided, ice bunker "reefer" of the American Refrigerator
Transit Company (ART), one specially-designated for the transport
of dairy products, circa 1940.

A refrigerator (or "reefer")
is a refrigeratedboxcar (US) or van (UIC), a piece of railroadrolling stock
designed to carry perishable freight at specific temperatures.
Refrigerator cars differ from simple insulated boxcars and ventilated boxcars (commonly
used for transporting fruit),
neither of which are fitted with cooling apparatus. Reefers can be
ice-cooled, come equipped with any one of a
variety of mechanical refrigeration systems, or utilize carbon dioxide
(either as dry ice, or in
liquid form) as a cooling agent. Milk cars (and other types of "express" reefers)
may or may not include a cooling system, but are equipped with
high-speed trucks and other
modifications that allow them to travel with passenger trains.

Reefer applications can be divided into five broad groups: 1) dairy and poultry producers require refrigeration and
special interior racks; 2) fruit
and vegetable reefers
tend to see seasonal use, and are generally used for long-distance
shipping (for some shipments, only ventilation is necessary to
remove the heat created by the ripening process); 3) manufacturedfoods (such as canned goods and candy) as well as beer and wine do
not require refrigeration, but do need the protection of an
insulated car; 4) meat reefers come equipped with specialized beef
rails for handling sides of meat, and brine-tank refrigeration to provide lower
temperatures (most of these units are either owned or leased by
meat packing firms); and 5) fish
and seafoods are
transported, packed in wooden or foam polystyrene box with crushed ice, and
ice bunkers are not used generally.

Upon arrival at the local processing facility, livestock were
either slaughtered by
wholesalers and delivered fresh to nearby butcher shops for retail
sale, smoked, or packed for shipment in barrels of salt. Costly
inefficiencies were inherent in transporting live animals by rail,
particularly the fact that about sixty percent of the animal's mass
is inedible. The death of animals weakened by the long drive
further increased the per-unit shipping cost. Meat packer Gustavus Swift sought a way to
ship dressed meats from his Chicago packing plant to eastern
markets.

Early attempts at
refrigerated transport

An advertisement taken from the 1st edition (1879) of the
Car-Builders Dictionary for the Tiffany
Refrigerator Car Company, a pioneer in the design of
refrigerated railroad cars.

Attempts were made during the mid-1800s to ship agricultural products
by rail. As early as 1842, the Western Railroad of Massachusetts was
reported in the June 15 edition of the Boston Traveler to
be experimenting with innovative freight car designs
capable of carrying all types of perishable goods without
spoilage.[2] The
first refrigerated boxcar entered service in June 1851, on the Northern
Railroad of New York (or NRNY, which later became part of the
Rutland Railroad). This "icebox on wheels"
was a limited success since it was only functional in cold weather.
That same year, the Ogdensburg and Lake
Champlain Railroad (O&LC) began shipping butter to Boston
in purpose-built freight cars, utilizing ice for cooling.

The first consignment of dressed beef left the Chicago stock
yards in 1857 in ordinary boxcars retrofitted with bins filled with ice.
Placing meat directly against ice resulted in discoloration and
affected the taste, and proved impractical. During the same period
Swift experimented by moving cut meat using a string of ten boxcars
with their doors removed, and made a few test shipments to New York
during the winter months over the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR). The
method proved too limited to be practical.

The interior of a typical ice-bunker reefer from the 1920s. The
wood sheathing was replaced by plywood within twenty years. Vents in the
bunker at the end of the car, along with slots in the wood floor
racks, allowed cool air to circulate around the contents.

Detroit'sWilliam Davis patented a refrigerator car
that employed metal racks to suspend the carcasses above a frozen
mixture of ice and salt. He sold the design in 1868 to George H.
Hammond, a Detroit meat packer, who built a set of cars to
transport his products to Boston using ice from the Great Lakes for
cooling.[3] The
load had the tendency of swinging to one side when the car entered
a curve at high speed, and use of the units was discontinued after
several derailments. In 1878 Swift hired engineer Andrew Chase to
design a ventilated car that was well insulated, and positioned the
ice in a compartment at the top of the car, allowing the chilled
air to flow naturally downward.[4] The
meat was packed tightly at the bottom of the car to keep the center of gravity low and to prevent the
cargo from shifting. Chase's design proved to be a practical
solution to providing temperature-controlled carriage of dressed
meats, and allowed Swift and Company
to ship their products across the United States and
internationally.

Swift's attempts to sell Chase's design to major railroads were
rebuffed, as the companies feared that they would jeopardize their
considerable investments in stock cars, animal pens, and feedlots
if refrigerated meat transport gained wide acceptance. In response,
Swift financed the initial production run on his own, then — when
the American roads refused his business — he contracted with the
GTR (a railroad that derived little income from transporting live
cattle) to haul the cars into Michigan and then eastward through Canada. In
1880 the Peninsular Car Company
(subsequently purchased by ACF) delivered the first of these units
to Swift, and the Swift Refrigerator Line (SRL) was created. Within
a year the Line’s roster had risen to nearly 200 units, and Swift
was transporting an average of 3,000 carcasses a week to Boston, Massachusetts. Competing firms such
as Armour
and Company quickly followed suit. By 1920 the SRL owned and
operated 7,000 of the ice-cooled rail cars. The General
American Transportation Corporation would assume ownership of
the line in 1930.

The "Ice
Age"

The use of ice to refrigerate and thus preserve food dates back
to prehistoric times. Through the ages, the seasonal harvesting of
snow and ice was a regular practice of many cultures. China, Greece, and Rome stored ice and
snow in caves or dugouts lined with straw or other insulating
materials. Rationing of the ice allowed the preservation of foods
during hot periods, a practice that was successfully employed for
centuries. For most of the 1800s, natural ice (harvested from ponds
and lakes) was used to supply refrigerator cars. At high altitudes
or northern latitudes, one foot tanks were often filled with water
and allowed to freeze. Ice was typically cut into blocks during the
winter and stored in insulated warehouses for later use, with
sawdust and hay packed around the ice blocks to provide additional
insulation. A late-19th century wood-bodied reefer required reicing
every 250 to 400 miles (640 km).

Top icing of bagged vegetables in a refrigerator car.

By the turn of the 20th century manufactured ice became more
common. The Pacific Fruit Express (PFE), for
example, maintained 7 natural harvesting facilities, and operated
18 artificial ice plants. Their largest plant (located in Roseville, California) produced
1,200 short tons of ice daily, and Roseville’s docks could
accommodate up to 254 cars. At the industry’s peak, 13 million
short tons of ice was produced for refrigerator car use
annually.

"Top
Icing"

Top icing is the practice of placing a 2 to 4-inch (100 mm)
layer of crushed ice on top of agricultural products that have high
respiration rates, need high relative humidity, and benefit from
having the cooling agent sit directly atop the load (or within
individual boxes). Cars with pre-cooled fresh produce were top iced
just before shipment. Top icing added considerable dead weight to
the load. Top-icing a 40-foot (12 m) reefer required in over
10,000 pounds of ice. It had been postulated that as the ice melts,
the resulting chilled water would trickle down through the load to
continue the cooling process. It was found, however, that top-icing
only benefited the uppermost layers of the cargo, and that the
water from the melting ice often passed through spaces between the
cartons and pallets with little or no cooling effect. It was
ultimately determined that top-icing is useful only in preventing
an increase in temperature, and was eventually discontinued.

Men harvest ice on Michigan'sLake Saint Clair, circa 1905.
The ice was cut into blocks and hauled by wagon to a cold storage
warehouse, and held until needed.

Ice blocks (also called "cakes") are manually placed into
reefers from a covered icing dock. Each block weighed between 200
and 400 pounds. Crushed ice was typically used for meat cars.

The "business end" of a mechanical ice loading system services a
line of Pacific Fruit Express refrigerator cars. Each car will
require approximately 5½ short tons (5 metric tons) of ice.

Workmen top off a reefer's top-mounted bunkers with crushed
ice.

The typical service cycle for an ice-cooled produce reefer
(generally handled as a part of a block of cars):

The cars were cleaned with hot water or steam.

Depending on the cargo, the cars might have undergone 4 hours
of "pre-cooling" prior to loading, which entailed blowing in cold
air through one ice hatch and allowing the warmer air to be
expelled through the other hatches. The practice, dating back
almost to the inception of the refrigerator car, saved ice and
resulted in fresher cargo.

The cars' ice bunkers were filled, either manually from an icing dock, via mechanical
loading equipment, or (in locations where demand for ice was
sporadic) using specially-designed field icing cars.

The cars were delivered to the shipper for loading, and the ice
was topped-off.

Depending on the cargo and destination, the cars may have been
fumigated.

The train would depart for the eastern markets.

The cars were reiced in transit approximately once a day.

Upon reaching their destination, the cars were unloaded.

If in demand, the cars would be returned to their point of
origin empty. If not in demand, the cars would be cleaned and
possibly used for a dry shipment.

This engraving of Tiffany’s original "Summer and Winter Car"
appeared in the Railroad Gazette just before Joel Tiffany
received his refrigerator car patent in July, 1877. Tiffany's
design mounted the ice tank in a clerestory atop the car's roof, and relied
on a train's motion to circulate cool air throughout the cargo
space.

A Pullman-built "shorty" reefer bears the Armour
Packing Co. · Kansas City logo, circa
1885. The name of the "patentee" was displayed on the car's
exterior, a practice intended to "...impress the shipper and
intimidate the competition...," even though most patents
covered trivial or already-established design concepts.

A rare double-door refrigerator car utilized the "Hanrahan
System of Automatic Refrigeration" as built by ACF, circa
1898. The car had a single, centrally located ice bunker which was
said to offer better cold air distribution. The two segregated cold
rooms were well suited for less-than-carload (LCL) shipments.

Refrigerator cars required effective insulation to protect their
contents from temperature extremes. "Hairfelt" derived from compressed cattle hair,
sandwiched into the floor and walls of the car, was inexpensive but
flawed — over its three- to four-year service life it would decay,
rotting out the car's wooden partitions and tainting the cargo with
a foul odor. The higher cost of other materials such as "Linofelt"
(woven from flax fibers) or cork prevented their widespread adoption.
Synthetic materials such as fiberglass and polystyrene foam, both introduced after World War II, offered
the most cost-effective and practical solution.

Mechanical refrigeration

In the latter half of the 20th century mechanical refrigeration
began to replace ice-based systems. In time, mechanical
refrigeration units replaced the "armies" of personnel required to
re-ice the cars. The "plug" door was introduced experimentally by
P.F.E. (Pacific Fruit Express) in April 1947, when one of their
R-40-10 series cars, #42626, was equipped with one. P.F.E.'s
R-40-26 series reefers, designed in 1949 and built in 1951, were
the first production series cars to be so equipped. In addition,
the Santa Fe Railroad first used plug doors on their SFRD RR-47
series cars, which were also built in 1951. This type of door,
provided a larger six foot opening, to facilitate car loading and
unloading. These tight-fitting doors were better insulated and
could maintain a more even temperature inside the car. By the
mid-1970s the few remaining ice bunker cars were relegated to
"top-ice" service, where crushed ice was applied atop the
commodity.

A cutaway illustration of a conventional mechanical refrigerator
car, which typically contains in excess of 800 moving parts.

A modern refrigerator car: note the grill at the lower right
(the car's "A" end) where the mechanical refrigeration unit is
housed.

State-of-the-art mechanical refrigerator car designs place the
removable, end-mounted refrigeration unit outside of the freight
compartment in order to facilitate access for servicing or
replacement.

A modern mechanical refrigerator car, outfitted for high-speed
service, bears the colors and markings of Amtrak Express, Amtrak's freight and shipping service.

Cryogenic refrigeration

Cryogenic refrigerator cars, such as those owned and operated by
Cryo-Trans, Inc., are used today to transport frozen food products,
including french
fries. Today, Cryo-Trans operates a fleet in excess of 515
cryogenic railcars.

The Topeka,
Kansas shops of the Santa Fe Railway built five experimental
refrigerator cars employing liquid nitrogen as the cooling agent in
1965. A mist induced by liquified nitrogen was released throughout
the car if the temperature rose above a pre-determined level. Each
car carried 3,000 pounds (1,360 kg) of refrigerant and could
maintain a temperature of minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit (−30 °C). During the 1990s, a few
railcar manufacturers experimented with the use of liquid carbon
dioxide (CO2) as a cooling agent. The
move was in response to rising fuel costs, and was an attempt to
eliminate the standard mechanical refrigeration systems that
required periodic maintenance. The CO2
system can keep the cargo frozen solid as long as 14 to 16
days.

Several hundred "cryogenic" refrigerator cars were placed in
service transporting frozen foodstuffs, though they failed to gain
wide acceptance (due, in part, to the rising cost of liquid carbon
dioxide). Since cryogenic refrigeration is a proven technology and
environmentally friendly, the rising price of fuel and the
increased availability of carbon dioxide from Kyoto
Protocol-induced capturing techniques may lead to a resurgence
in cryogenic railcar usage.

Experimentation

Aluminum and stainless
steel

In 1946, the Pacific Fruit Express procured from the Consolidated Steel
Corporation of Wilmington,
California two 40-foot (12 m) aluminum-bodied ventilator
refrigerator cars, to compare the durability of the lightweight
alloy versus that of steel. It was hoped that weight savings (the
units weighed almost 10,000 pounds less than a like-sized all-steel
car) and better corrosion resistance would offset the higher
initial cost. One of the aluminum car bodies was manufactured by Alcoa (PFE #44739), while the other
was built by the Reynolds Aluminum Company (PFE
#45698).

The cars (outfitted with state-of-the-art fiberglass insulation
and axle-driven fans for internal air circulation) traveled
throughout the Southern Pacific and Union Pacific systems, where
they were displayed to promote PFE's post-World War II modernization. Though both
units remained in service over 15 years (#45698 was destroyed in a
wreck in May 1962, while #44739 was scrapped in 1966), no
additional aluminum reefers were constructed, cost being the likely
reason. Also in 1946 the Consolidated Steel delivered the world's
only reefer to have a stainless steel body to the Santa Fe
Refrigerator Despatch. The 40-foot (12 m) car was equipped
with convertible ice bunkers, side ventilation ducts, and
axle-driven circulation fans. It was thought that stainless steel
would better resist the corrosive deterioration resulting from
salting the ice. The one-of-a-kind unit entered service as #13000,
but was subsequently redesignated as #1300, and later given #4150
in 1955.[5]

#4150 spent most of its life in express service. Cost was cited
as the reason no additional units were ordered. The car was
dismantled at Clovis, New Mexico in February,
1964.

"Depression Baby"

During the 1930s, the North American Car Company produced a
one-of-a-kind, four-wheeled ice bunker reefer intended to serve the
needs of specialized shippers who did not generate sufficient
product to fill a full-sized refrigerator car. NADX #10000 was a
22-foot-long, all-steel car that resembled the forty-and-eights used in Europe during
World War I. The
prototype weighed in at 13½ tons and
was outfitted with a 1,500-pound ice bunker at each end. The car was
leased to Hormel and saw
service between Chicago, Illinois
and the southern United States. The concept failed to gain
acceptance with the big eastern railroads and no additional units
were built.

Dry ice

The Santa Fe Refrigerator Despatch (SFRD) briefly experimented
with dry ice as a cooling
agent in 1931. The compound was readily-available and seemed like
an ideal replacement for frozen water. Dry ice melts at -109 °F /
-78.33 °C (versus 32 °F / 0 °C for conventional ice) and was twice
as effective thermodynamically. Overall weight was reduced as the
need for brine and water was eliminated. While the higher cost of
dry ice was certainly a drawback, logistical issues in loading long
lines of cars efficiently prevented it from gaining acceptance over
conventional ice. Worst of all, it was found that dry ice can
adversely affect the color and flavor of certain foods if placed
too close to them.

Hopper
cars

In 1969, the Burlington Northern
Railroad ordered a number of modified covered hopper cars from American Car and Foundry for transporting
perishable food in bulk. The 55-foot (16.76 m)-long cars were
blanketed with a layer of insulation, equipped with roof hatches
for loading, and had centerflow openings along the bottom for fast
discharge. A mechanical refrigeration unit was installed at each
end of the car, where sheet metal ducting forced cool air into the
cargo compartments.

The units, rated at 100 short tons (90.718 t) capacity (more than twice that of the largest
conventional refrigerator car of the day) were economical to load
and unload, as no secondary packaging was required. Apples,
carrots, onions, and potatoes were transported in this manner with
some success. Oranges, on the other hand, tended to burst under
their own weight, even after wooden baffles were installed to
better distribute the load. The Santa Fe Railway leased 100 of the
hoppers from ACF, and in April, 1972 purchased 100 new units. The
cars' irregular, orange-colored outer surface (though darker than
the standard AT&SF yellow-orange used on reefers) tended to
collect dirt easily, and proved difficult to clean. Santa Fe
eventually relegated the cars to more typical, non-refrigerated
applications.

Refrigerator cars in
Japan

The first refrigerated cars in Japan entered service in 1908 for
fish transport. Many of these cars were equipped with ice bunkers,
however the bunkers were not used generally. Fish were packed in
wooden or foam polystyrene boxes with crushed ice.

Fruit and meat transportation in refrigerated rail cars was not
common in Japan. For fruits and vegetables, ventilator cars were
sufficient due to the short distances involved in transportation.
Meat required low temperature storage, therefore transportation was
by ship, since most major Japanese cities are located along the
coast.

Refrigerator cars suffered heavy damage in World War II,
afterwards the occupation forces confiscated many cars for their
own use, utilizing the ice bunkers as originally intended. Supplies
were landed primarily at Yokohama, and reefer trains ran from the port
to US bases around Japan.

In 1966, JNR developed "resa 10000"
and "remufu 10000" type refrigerated cars that could travel at 62
mph (this was very fast in the sense of Japanese freight trains).
They were used in fish freight express trains. "Tobiuo"(Flying fish) train from
Shimonoseki to Tokyo, and "Ginrin"(Silver scale) train
from Hakata to Tokyo, were operated.

By the 1960s, refrigerator trucks had begun to displace
railcars. Strikes in the 1970s resulted in the loss of reliability
and punctuality, important to fish transportation. In 1986, the
last refrigerated cars were replaced by reefer containers.

Most Japanese reefers were four-wheeled due to the small traffic
demands. There were very few bogie wagons in late years. The total
number of Japanese reefers numbered approximately 8,100. At their
peak, about 5,000 refrigerated cars were operated in the late
1960s. Mechanical refrigerators were tested, but did not see
widespread use.

There were no privately-owned reefers in Japan, as compared to
the US. This is because fish transportation were protected by
national policies and rates were kept low, and there was little
profit in refrigerated car ownership.

Preservation

Examples of many styles of refrigerator and ice cars can be
found at railroad museums around the world.

The Western Pacific Railroad
Museum at Portola, California features a very
complete roster of 20th century cars, including wood bodied ice
cars, steel bodied ice cars, one of the earliest mechanical
refrigerator cars, later mechanical refrigerator cars and a
cryogenic reefer, as well as several "insulated" boxcars also used
for food transport.

1868: William Davis of Detroit, Michigan
developed a refrigerator car cooled by a frozen ice-salt mixture,
and patented it in the US. The patent was subsequently sold to
George Hammond, a local meat packer who amassed a fortune in
refrigerated shipping.

1876: German engineer Carl von Linde developed one of the
first mechanical refrigeration systems.

1878: Gustavus Swift (along with engineer Andrew Chase)
developed the first practical ice-cooled railcar. Soon Swift formed
the Swift Refrigerator Line (SRL), the world's first.

1880: The first patent for a mechanically-refrigerated railcar
issued in the United States was granted to Charles William
Cooper.

1887 Parker Earle joined F.A. Thomas of Chicago in the fruit
shipping business. The company owned 60 ice-cooled railcars by
1888, and 600 by 1891.

1888: Armour & Co. shipped beef from Chicago to Florida in
a car cooled by ethyl chloride-compression machinery. Florida oranges were shipped to
New York under refrigeration for the first time.

1889: The first cooled shipment of fruit from California was
sold on the New York market.

1898: Russia's first
refrigerator cars entered service. The country's inventory w
reached 1,900 by 1908, and 3,000 two years later, and peaked at
approximately 5,900 by 1916. The cars were utilized mainly for
transporting butter from Siberia to the Baltic Sea, a 12 day journey.

1899: Refrigerated fruit traffic within the US reached 90,000
short tons per year;
Transport from California to NY averaged 12 days in 1900.

1901: Carl von Linde equipped a Russian train with a mobile,
central mechanical refrigeration plant to distribute cooling to
cars carrying perishable goods. Similar systems were used in Russia
as late as 1975.

1905: U.S. traffic in refrigerated fruit reacheed 430,000 short
tons. As refrigerator car designs become standardized, the practice
of indicating the "patentee" on the sides was discontinued.

1907: The Pacific Fruit Express began operations with more than
6,000 refrigerated cars, transporting fruit and vegetables from
Western producers to Eastern consumers. US traffic in refrigerated
fruit hit 600,000 short tons.

1908: Japan's first refrigerator cars entered service. The cars
were for seafood transportation, in the same manner as most other
Japanese reefers.

1913: The number of thermally-insulated railcars (most of which
were cooled by ice) in the U.S. topped 100,000.

1920: The Fruit Growers Express (or FGE, a former subsidiary of
the Armour Refrigerator Line) was formed using 4,280 reefers
acquired from Armour & Co.

1923: FGE and the Great Northern Railway
for the Western Fruit Express (WFE) in order to compete with the
Pacific Fruit Express and Santa Fe Refrigerator Despatch in the
West.

1925–1930: Mechanically-refrigerated trucks enter service and
gain public acceptance, particularly for the delivery of milk and
ice cream.

1926: The FGE expanded its service into the Pacific Northwest
and the Midwest through the WFE and the Burlington Refrigerator
Express Company (BREX), its other partly-owned subsidiary. FGE
purchased 2,676 reefers from the Pennsylvania Railroad.

1928: The FGE formed the National Car Company as a subsidiary
to service the meat transportation market. Customers include Kahns, Oscar Mayer, and
Rath.

1930: The number of refrigerator cars in the United States
reached its maximum of approximately 183,000.

1960s: The flush, "plug" style sliding door was introduced as
an option, providing a larger door to ease loading and unloading.
The tight-fitting doors were better insulated and allowed the car
to be maintained at a more even temperature.

2001: The number of refrigerator cars in the United States
bottomed out at approximately 8,000.

2005: The number of reefers in the United States climbs to
approximately 25,000, due to significant new refrigerator car
orders.

Specialized applications

Express
service

An REA express reefer is positioned at the head end of Santa Fe
train No.8, the Fast Mail Express, in 1965.

Standard refrigerated transport is often utilized for good with
less than 14 days of refrigerated "shelf life": avocados, cut
flowers, green leafy vegetables, lettuce, mangos, meat products,
mushrooms, peaches and nectarines, pineapples and papayas, sweet
cherries, and tomatoes. "Express" reefers are typically employed in
the transport of special perishables: commodities with a
refrigerated shelf life of less than 7 days such as human blood,
fish, green onions, milk, strawberries, and
certain pharmaceuticals.

The earliest express-service refrigerator cars entered service
around 1890, shortly after the first express train routes were
established in North America. The cars did not come into general
use until the early 20th century. Most units designed for express
service are larger than their standard counterparts, and are
typically constructed more along the lines of baggage cars than
freight equipment. Cars must be equipped with speed-rated trucks
and brakes, and — if they are to be run ahead of the passenger car
consist — must also incorporate an air line for pneumatic braking,
a communication signal air line, and a steam line for train
heating. Express units were typically painted in passenger car
colors, such as Pullman green.

The first purpose-built express reefer emerged from the Erie Railroad's
Susquehanna Shops on August 1, 1886. By 1927 some 2,218 express
cars traveled America's rails, and three years later that number
was 3,264. In 1940 private rail lines began to build and operate
their own reefers, the Railway Express Agency (REA)
being by far the largest. In 1948 the REA roster (which would
continue to expand into the 1950s) numbered approximately 1,800
cars, many of which were World War II "troop sleepers" modified for express
refrigerated transport. By 1965, due to a decline in refrigerated
traffic, many express reefers were leased to railroads for use as
bulk mail carriers.

Pacific Fruit Express #722, an ice-cooled, express-style
refrigerator car designed to carry milk in stainless steel
cans and other highly-perishable cargo at the head end of passenger
train consists.

Railway Express Agency refrigerator car #6687, a converted World
War II "troop sleeper." Note the square panels along the sides that
cover the window openings.

Intermodal

For many years, virtually all of the perishable traffic in the
United States was carried by the railroads. While railroads were
subject to government regulation regarding shipping rates, trucking
companies could set their own rate for hauling agricultural
products, giving them a competitive edge. In March 1979 the ICC exempted rail
transportation of fresh fruits and vegetables from all economic
regulation. Once the "Agricultural Exemption Clause" was removed
from the Interstate Commerce Act, railroads began
aggressively pursuing trailer-on-flatcar (TOFC) business (a form of
intermodal freight
transport) for refrigerated trailers. Taking this one step
further, a number of carriers (including the PFE and SFRD)
purchased their own refrigerated trailers to compete with
interstate trucks.

The final chapter has not, as many have predicted, been written
for the refrigerator car in America. The dawn of the 21st century
has seen the first significant reefer orders since the early
1970s.

Tropicana "Juice
Train"

In 1970 Tropicana orange juice was shipped in bulk via insulatedboxcars
in one weekly round-trip from Bradenton, Florida to Kearny, New
Jersey. By the following year, the company was operating two
60-car unit trains a week, each carrying around 1 million U.S. gallons (4 million liters) of juice. On June 7, 1971
the "Great White Juice Train" (the first unit train in the food
industry, consisting of 150 one hundred short ton insulated boxcars fabricated in the
Alexandria, Virginia shops of Fruit
Growers Express) commenced service over the 1,250-mile
(2,000-kilometer) route. An additional 100 cars were soon added,
and small mechanical refrigeration units were installed to keep
temperatures constant. Tropicana saved $40 million in fuel costs
during the first ten years in operation.